Construction Begins on Newest Nebraska Innovation Campus Building

Strictly Business
10/01/17

Construction on a new 80,000-square-foot, multi-tenant building at Nebraska Innovation Campus (www.innovate.unl.edu) is officially underway. Nebraska Innovation Campus Development Corporation (NICDC) and Tetrad Property Group broke ground on Aug. 30. Richard Meginnis and Sally DeLair of NAI FMA Realty are marketing the building for lease.

The three-story structure will feature a planned business incubator and will contain common spaces built to spur collaboration. Area around the building will include a community garden and space for outdoor activities.

Tetrad Property Group has engaged a premier design team for construction of the new building. The Clark Enersen Partners is the architect of record. Civil engineering work is being completed by Olsson Associates and Hausmann Construction is the general contractor on the project. Like the other buildings on campus, the new building will be to LEED Silver standards. It will also be connected to the Centralized Renewable Energy System, giving the building a low carbon footprint. The CRES leverages its proximity to the City of Lincoln’s Theresa Street Wastewater Treatment Plant to provide year-long heating and cooling to NIC without steam boilers and water chillers. Instead, the CRES sustainably warms and cools building by exchanging thermal energy from treated wastewater.

Continuing the momentum of the long-term build-out plan for the research campus, the newest facility – NIC’s fifth – is planned to open in late summer 2018. Overall, construction of the campus began in 2012, and within three years, 380,000 square feet of office, conference center, lab, pilot plant and greenhouse space was completed. This year the campus has added restaurant space and welcomed The Mill Coffee and Bistro. The Biotech Connector wet lab research space also has been completed and is being populated.

NIC is currently home to a diverse group of 30 partners, both private and public entities. At full build-out, NIC will be a 2.2-million square-foot campus. For more information about Nebraska Innovation Campus, visit www.innovate.unl.edu.